The most commonly used platform for manual collection of data is completion of a form. (The term “form,” as used herein, refers generally to a document (electronic or paper based) that is organized into a plurality of fields for entry of data related to the plurality of fields. The data may include, for example, a signature, or a link to other data.).
It is desirable in many environments to digitize information entered into forms and provide this data to other computer systems. One example is a service person attending at a residence to process an order for a swimming pool. The services person generally fills out one or more forms containing fields for data related to service ordering, ordering of equipment and supplies, calculation of payment, scheduling of personnel, processing of deposits by credit card, ordering of follow up services calls and so on. This data is desirable from the perspective of the pool installation company's scheduling system, accounting system and so on. Other examples including medical consent forms, medical treatment order forms, parking tickets and so on.
Numerous prior art solutions exist that fully digitized forms and make them available on a wide variety of devices, including for example hand held devices. There are a number of disadvantages to these prior art technologies. First, the adoption of the digitized forms requires behavioral change in users changing the way the work, often radically. With numerous key user bases this behavioral change has presented a very significant barrier to the adoption of these digital technologies. Second, these technologies have been generally costly to adopt, particularly when considering the training required for the user base to adapt to the change in their workflow. Third, and perhaps most importantly, with most applications of the prior art technologies completion of forms based on digital input is generally significantly slower than filling out forms manually. This results in yet another important barrier to adoption.
Other prior art technologies are directed to digital data capture after the manual form has been completed by the user. These technologies generally required the scanning and processing of the forms using OCR technology. This solution, however, is costly in that significant resources are expended in data entry and data correction, even with improved technology. Significant costs and time delays are also incurred in the physical collection, transportation, handling, sorting and storing these paper based documents. Also, it is often desirable or required to obtain feedback on the accuracy of the digitized form data from the user who originally completed the form. This is often necessary, for example, in medical applications of the technology. Even if the time that has elapsed between the completion of the form and the feedback request is relatively short, recollection may be imperfect or the further burden on busy staff that is presented by the feedback request may be undesirable. Further the cots imposed on the system for verifying and re-entering data are significant.
What is needed therefore is a technology that is based on digital capture of data linked to manual handwritten completion of a form by a user, in real time while the form is completed.
Technologies directed at this manual/digital form of electronic form data capture are known.
For example, A.T. Cross Company markets a CROSSPAD™ 35, a portable digital notepad that digitizes and records pen movements using radio transmission. The CROSSPAD transmits the recorded pen movements to a personal computer for processing and analysis. Similar technologies have been developed by Pegaus, whose PCNoteTaker uses a similar technology to turn movements of the pen into a digital X-Y stream.
Technologies are also known that facilitate the electronic capture of data while a paper based form is being completed in addressing specific problems that arise during operation. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,660,482 issued to WorkOnce Wireless Corporation provides a “Method and System for Form Recognition and Digitized Image Processing” which discloses a solution for achieving alignment between a digital ink image of handwritten information on a form with an image of the underlying form.
What is needed, however, is an integrated solution that enables the capture and real time character recognition to electronic data from a traditional form at the point of data capture and that processes the data using a pre-defined electronic workflow. There is also a need for a solution that enables data verification as part of a single transaction simultaneous with the completion of the paper based form, to create an intelligent learning system.